Ladies In The Parlor

by Tully, Jim

  June shook her head, then pushed a wave of black hair from her temple. “Jeeze,” she exclaimed, “What a hard son-of-a-bitch he was... I think he knew he had me, and do you know, he didn’t give a good God damn for me—I’d be exhausted when I got through with him. I’d have one thrill after another, and then I’d pretend, and he’d damn near shake me to pieces—till I was limp as a God-damn rag—then he’d laugh at me.”

  “What did he look like?” asked Leora.

  “I’ll be damned if I can tell you exactly. His skin was pounded down on his face like a prize-fighter’s, and his shoulders were as big as Mother Rosenbloom’s bottom—he had a woman tattooed on his breast. You could see her lyin’ naked like she was in a woods, his black hair standin’ over her . . . there was big dents in his jaws, and once when I hit him in fun with my fist, I damn near cracked my knuckle—when they yelled that his taxi was down front, he slapped a twenty dollar bill on the dresser, and he’d already paid me; then he says —gurgling the last of the liquor on the table

  'An old mare and an old whore—

  Is only good for a few loads more—

  “‘So get out of the racket, kid—throw hash somewhere and sleep with a section hand.’ Katie heard him tell the driver to take him to the Sherman House. I went there this week on my day off and hung around—but I didn’t know his name,—damned if I could locate him.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t like him if you knew him better,” said Leora, by way of solace.

  “Know him better,” June sighed. “That first night with him was enough for me. I think I knew then I’d met the right guy.”

  A silence came between the girls. Finally June said petulantly, “Oh—to hell with it—he was some damn roughneck, I suppose.”

  She talked no more until her mood became lighter.

  She then went to the piano and began to play and sing.

  Once in a blue moon,

  There will come the right one—

  The verse of the song finished, June turned to Leora with, “Were you ever in love?”

  “Not yet,” she answered. “I thought I was once.”

  The house doctor came the following Monday to examine the girls for venereal disease.

  When he finished his task he reported to Mother Rosenbloom that all were in excellent health but June.

  “What is wrong with her?” asked Mother Rosenbloom.

  “A rabid case—she had better go to the hospital at once—it may develop. I’ll telephone Judge Slattery; he’ll arrange,” said the doctor.

  “All right—do that—I’ll talk to him later.”

  Mother Rosenbloom twisted the gold chain about her hands, and said slowly, “Well, well—poor June.”

  The doctor lifted his satchel from the chair and made a few steps toward the door. “It’s too bad,” he ventured; “it’s the first case I’ve ever found in your house.”

  The immense woman released the chain from about her fingers. Her words came sharply, “I’ll take care of it, Doctor—but you might phone Judge Slattery.”

  She walked slowly to June’s room.

  “Well, dear, the doctor tells me you’ve been elected—I’ve told you so often to examine men carefully.”

  June turned suddenly, “Mother, are you joking?”

  “No, dear, if you’ll notice—he did not give you a health certificate.”

  June stood in her negligee, her pink and white body showing. The heavy distributor of sex gazed at her in admiration before saying, “It’s a damn shame, dear—but you’d better go to the hospital quietly—or lie in somewhere. I’m having it arranged.”

  Confused, June looked about the room.

  “Who could it have been?” asked Mother Rosenbloom.

  June smiled, and answered bitterly, “Only one—and damn his black heart.”

  “But why take such chances, dear?”

  “He told me he was all right and I believed him. He looked like a stallion.” June choked a sob and went to Mother Rosenbloom.

  The vast woman held the girl’s head for a moment against her wide bosom.

  “It will be all right, my dear. You must not let it worry you—such things are harder on women when they worry.” Her flabby bediamonded hand patted June’s shoulder. At last the girl sobbed several times. “Now you’ll feel better—get ready for lunch, dear.”

  “I couldn’t think of it, Mother.”

  “Come, come, the girls will understand.” For a fleeting second Mother Rosenbloom’s eyes were sad. Then her lips went tight together. She left the girl’s room.

  June’s place was vacant at the table. Mother Rosenbloom looked at the vacant chair. She rang the bell at her plate.

  “Take a tray to Miss June’s room,” she said. The maid bowed and went to the kitchen.

  “As you know, girls—June is ill—she is leaving.” There was a direful foreboding in her words.

  “Yes, we know,” said Selma.

  The girls gathered in June’s room when the meal was finished.

  There was forced gaiety in the house for several days after she had gone.

  A month passed.

  Three of the girls came forward when told there was a man in the house.

  He entered as though nothing had happened. Recognizing the girls, he asked, “Where is my little doll?”

  Leora, Selma and Mary Ellen stood rigid as soldiers at attention.

  “Where do you think she is, you dirty black bastard?” sneered Selma. “Get out of here, you dog.” She ran to the hall where a maid was scrubbing the floor. Seizing a bucket of soapy water, she returned quickly to the parlor and dashed it upon him. “It’ll clean you up, you diseased rat.”

  The man who had been June’s hero shook himself and hurried to the door. Selma jumped upon him, put her forearm under his chin and jerked his head back. The maid ran from the hallway to the kitchen. The cook came into the parlor with a rolling-pin. Without saying a word she cracked the man across the head. He shook himself furiously. The girls fell every which way; then rushed toward him, scratching his face and pulling his hair.

  Before he could fight his way to the door, Mother Rosenbloom had him by the throat. She swung an arm, heavy as the limb of a tree. Her fist hit him under the eye. The diamonds on her fingers tore gashes in his flesh. “Now hurry out of here,” she shouted, hitting him again. His eye began to close.

  “Get out, get out, get out, you rat-eyed bastard,” Mother Rosenbloom commanded. The cook opened the door. The three girls pushed, while Mother Rosenbloom took his arm and threw him violently into the street.

  The five women watched, while he scrambled to his feet and ran away.

  “We’ll show him where his little doll is,” Selma laughed hysterically. Leora took Mother’s arm. Trembling with anger, the giant woman left the room in silence.

  “We should have done this the first time he came,” said Mary Ellen.

  “How did we know?” asked Leora.

  “That’s right,” said the dark cook, “how was we to know—no woman kin eber tell nothin’ ‘bout no man, nohow.”

  Chapter 14

  June’s place was taken by a girl who soon came to be known as “Crying Marie.” Her eyes were brown and liquid and round as silver dollars. Her form was slender, her abandon a temptation. Her mouth, slightly too large, marred the beauty of her face. But even that was forgotten in the glory of her smile. Her hair was jet black. It verged on deep blue under certain strong lights. Knowing this, Marie always managed at some time or another, in the presence of callers, to stand where the light was reflected upon it.

  It was Mother Rosenbloom’s custom to inspect all the baggage belonging to a new girl. She also examined very closely her negligee, and all other articles of apparel. “A girl must have plenty of silks and satins in her wardrobe,” she would often say, “the feel of such things gets more men that way than anything else.”

  While going through “Crying Marie’s” luggage, Mother discovered a small rawhide whip with a mounted silver ha
ndle. She shook her head knowingly, but said nothing, “For, after all,” she thought, “if a girl wishes to be whipped and divide the money with me, that is her business.”

  Marie brought several steady callers. Mother Rosenbloom, anxious to learn who might be the wielder of the whip, would scan each caller carefully. Soon a young man called. His manner was feminine. He was elegantly perfumed, and wore heavy blue eye-glasses. After he had been in Marie’s room for some moments, Mother Rosenbloom casually walked down the hallway, and stopped outside the girl’s door. She heard the swish of the whip, and the slight sobs of the girl. More satisfied than one who discovers a new comet, she walked away.

  She had resolved to say nothing to “Crying Marie.” At last her curiosity overcame her. She went to Marie’s room, and told her what she had heard.

  “Yes,” the girl admitted frankly, “it’s true—it pays well, and I rather enjoy it.”

  “Of course,” said Mother Rosenbloom, “all you get over the house price is your own, providing the guest is satisfied,” and then, indifferently, “What does he pay you for such goings-on?”

  “Twenty dollars—and he only whips me between my shoulder blades—I pretend to cry, and he doesn’t know the difference. You see—I can bring tears any time I want.” As Mother Rosenbloom stared, the girl’s eyes filled with tears.

  As one lost in a grove of miracles, Mother Rosenbloom shook her head. “You say he pays you twenty dollars?”

  “Yes,” replied Marie.

  “Well, I wish more of the damned men had whips instead of the things they have.” Still anxious to learn, Mother Rosenbloom asked, “What the devil ever possesses him to do a thing like that?”

  Wiping her eyes, Marie answered, “He claims it’s the thrill he gets out of shoving me around, and hearing me beg him not to hurt me—I must do it well, for he’s been whipping me for three years.”

  Mother Rosenbloom said nothing for some time. Marie’s small silver clock could be heard ticking in the silence. Mother Rosenbloom compared the time of her watch with that of the clock, then sighed, “Oh well—who can ever figure out a God-damned man?”

  “Useless to try,” said Marie, as she picked up the clock and wound it. Mother Rosenbloom left with the idea of cultivating the young man.

  Marie had a sister a year younger than herself. Their father was the drunkard of a Minnesota village. He often drank until he collapsed, and was dragged from gutter or ditch, unconscious. Daily, he would sweep out the saloon, shine the brass, and clean the windows in return for bed and whisky.

  Where he came from, no one knew or cared.

  One day an undertaker came to the saloon, and, by chance, began to talk to him. He found him a willing listener.

  The undertaker offered him work. By degrees he became interested in the work; he drank less. He assisted in embalming bodies, and was never so contented as when around the dead. He also drove one of the carriages in the funeral procession. Wearing a high hat and a frock coat, he would sit erect and proud all the way to the cemetery.

  As the undertaker grew older, he turned over the business to Terry, who was really a silent partner. He made it more prosperous.

  His wife became intimate with another man.

  The girls could hear them quarreling over the intruder; though even then he did not touch liquor and was still successful in business.

  After spending hours on a wintry night with her lover, his wife caught a heavy cold. Influenza followed. She was dead within a week.

  He became a drunkard again. His business collapsed as well as himself. His children were sent to an orphan asylum.

  Marie had been adopted by wealthy people, from whom she ran away. She remained with them long enough to absorb a taste for good living and a desire for exquisite things.

  Her hearing was not quite normal. For fear she would not hear a man correctly, and say the wrong thing, her method was to look at the speaker with wide open eyes after he had finished a speech and say with admiring conviction,

  “Aren’t you wonderful?”

  In this way she made many friends among men.

  Chapter 15

  Many of Mother Rosenbloom’s girls did not want their friends and relatives to know that they were in a house of prostitution, so it was their custom to have letters mailed to the “professor’s” house.

  The professor was the piano player. It was his duty every night to play the piano and otherwise make the house merry from nine until three.

  An ancient German, he had white hair, stooped shoulders, and a sagging lower lip. He wore a frock coat that had turned yellow, and his Byronic collar revealed a long, leathery, wrinkled neck.

  The lower lids fell away from rheumy eyes that seldom moved. He lived alone in a small house at the edge of the city. The girls often visited him on their “day off.”

  A man with no bad habits, he was tolerant with his associates. With his own passions long subsided, he would listen patiently to the woes of the troubled women around him.

  With an excellent knowledge of music, he had played the piano and the violin in Mother Rosenbloom’s house for sixteen years. Hn that time he had seen many young women come and go—some had married more or less happily, others had died, some had “opened their own places.” All had remembered “the professor.”

  Once, ill for a month, he was deluged with kindness.

  He received so many offers of help that Mother Rosenbloom took charge and allowed each girl to contribute twenty-five dollars, while she contributed two hundred. The old man was sent to the country until he had entirely recuperated.

  Each evening when he came to work, the girls would gather around him for their mail. Some would scold when they received no letters. His face would take on a hurt look, as though he had been to blame. He always smiled joyfully when he came burdened with mail.

  Leora became one of his favorites. He would rub his fingers over her as one would a piece of rare pottery. She was more silent than the other girls. The old man seldom talked. A bond of silence sprang up between them.

  Patiently he would teach her the first principles of playing the piano and watch her delicate hands go awkwardly over the keys. She absorbed considerable knowledge of music through him.

  The old man admired Beethoven. While Selma and Leora thrummed the piano with him, he talked of his favorite.

  “He was like a lion,” explained the professor, pushing his hands out to indicate Beethoven’s huge head and long hair. “He could make the thunder come, and the lightning—he was the son of a servant—a giant—a giant.”

  “Well that’s all right, I’m not snobbish—what a hell of a bedful he’d make,” said Selma.

  The professor, aghast, played the piano slowly.

  One evening he brought a letter for “Crying Marie.” It had been forwarded to several different cities before reaching his house. He watched her read the letter with intense interest.

  She answered it immediately and gave it to the professor to mail.

  Within a week, while the old man practiced a new tune on his violin, the doorbell rang.

  A stylishly dressed young woman stood before him. “Does Miss Mary V— live here?” she asked.

  “No, I live alone here—”

  “But I had a letter from this address a short time ago.”

  “Are you sure?” asked the old musician, and then, “Won’t you come in?”

  She stepped inside, saying, “Thank you,” then answered, “yes, I’m quite sure. She is my sister, and I received this letter from her.” She showed the old man the letter.

  At first he thought his caller a sister of Leora. He parleyed with,—”A girl did have a room here—is she—” and he described Leora.

  “No,” was the answer. Then came the description of “Crying Marie.” “I would like to take her home with me. I’m her sister.”

  Then the old musician said, “If you’ll wait here I’ll bring her to you.”

  “Thank you,” smiled the young woman.

 
; She had been adopted by a poor family, and grew up neglected by her more fortunate sister. The man was a laborer, his wife frowsy, and with a half dozen children. The authorities forced the family to allow her to go to school. She would do the house work before leaving each morning.

  Her mind was so apt that when she finished school, the young principal interested several families in her welfare. She was sent to Normal School.

  An attachment grew between herself and the principal. They exchanged letters weekly, in which little was said of love. Instead, there was a common interest, an intense joy of learning.

  When the girl finished Normal School, they were married in secret. The principal was chosen as superintendent of schools in the largest city of his state. He was thirty-four at the time and the newspapers commented editorially on the high honor bestowed upon him. He sent his wife, who was hardly twenty, to college. Upon her graduation as the valedictorian of her class, her marriage to the school superintendent was announced.

  “What,” asked Mother Rosenbloom, “brings you here in the middle of the afternoon?”

  The professor told his story.

  Mother Rosenbloom sent for “Crying Marie” and told her the information the professor had given.

  “Is it true?” she asked.

  “Yes—it’s true.”

  “Well, then, you must go home with her—take your handbags—get a taxi with the professor—then send me a telegram later and I’ll ship your trunk to you—it’s less wearing to be a whore in good society than here.”

  The girl hurried to her room. Soon she was in a taxi with the professor, and on the way to her sister.

  Mother Rosenbloom went to inspect the room.

  “Crying Marie” had taken the whip with her.

  Chapter 16

  Mother Rosenbloom straightened the curtains, then rang the bell for the housekeeper.